THE MOON 349 



By analogy, we are bound to presume that the moon 

 possesses, or at one time did possess, oceans in about the 

 same ratio to her mass as the earth, Mars and Venus. It 

 is true this is only a presumption ; nevertheless it places 

 the burden of proof on those who assert the opposite. 

 The question then confronts us ; What effect should these 

 lunar changes of season naturally have on the waters of 

 her streams and oceans? That these would undergo 

 great evaporation under a steady stream of sunshine two 

 weeks on end goes without saying, even were the moon's 

 gravity as great as the earth's, a fortiori in that her 

 gravity is but 1-6 as strong. 



The next question is ; Would the two seasons evenly 

 counter-balance each other, so that the summer's warmth 

 would completely counteract and undo the gelid effects 

 of the preceding winter? This question is not one for 

 argument, but for objective fact, and the moon's visibly 

 glacial condition is the answer. We have only to sup- 

 pose that at the beginning of the process, whenever that 

 may have been, the first winter deposited a greater litter 

 of snow than the ensuing summer succeeded in clear- 

 ing away, so that a residual sheet of snow how large is 

 immaterial, seeing that time was not of the essence re- 

 mained at the end of the first day (or summer) as the 

 nucleus for later accumulations to come. Thus, day by 

 day, with accelerated growth, the store of snow and ice 

 accumulated until all the water was congealed and all 

 that the winters had thereafter to do was to keep up the 

 status by merely making good the day's inroads. 



Of course, we cannot see the changes taking place on 

 the dark or hidden side of the satellite, but we can easily 

 judge of them from what we can perceive going on on 

 the areas we do see; and these latter are so easily un- 

 derstandable that a formal interpretation ought scarcely 

 to be required here. However, they are so interesting in 

 themselves that we shall consider some of them, by way 

 of illustration, to show how simply to construe even the 

 most complicated formations are. 



MAKIA. These are really ancient ocean bowls from 

 which their whilom contents have taken flight in the form 



